An image forming apparatus such as a printer executes an image forming process (printing) on a recording material such as a sheet of copy paper and discharges the printed recording material on a discharge tray.
For instance, the image forming apparatus includes a document reading part for reading image information of a document, an image forming part connected under the image reading part and implementing printing processes based on the read image information, and a sheet discharge part provided between the image reading part and the image forming part and receiving the sheet discharged after the printing process (see Patent Document 1). Such a so-called in-body sheet discharging type sheet discharge part includes an opening for taking out the printed sheet between the document reading part and the discharge tray.